Everything about Ethel Merman totally explained
Ethel Merman (
January 16,
1908 –
February 15,
1984) was a
Tony Award- and
Grammy Award-winning American star of
stage and
film musicals, well known for her powerful voice, often hailed by critics as "The Grande Dame of the Broadway stage".
Biography
Early life
Merman was born
Ethel Agnes Zimmermann in her
maternal grandmother's house at 359 4th Avenue,
Astoria,
Queens, New York. Her father, Edward Zimmermann, was an
accountant, and her mother, Agnes (
née Gardner), was a school teacher. Merman's father was
German American and
Lutheran, and her mother was
Scottish American and
Presbyterian; she was baptized
Episcopalian. She attended PS 6 on Steinway Street in Astoria. She used to stand outside the
Famous Players-Lasky Studios and wait to see her favorite
Broadway star,
Alice Brady. Ethel loved to sing songs like "
By the Light of the Silvery Moon" and "
Alexander's Ragtime Band" while her adoring father accompanied her on the piano.
William Cullen Bryant High School in Astoria named its auditorium Ethel Merman Theater.
Performance style
Merman was known for her powerful,
belting mezzo-soprano –
alto voice, precise
enunciation, and
pitch. Because stage singers performed without
microphones when she began singing professionally, she'd great advantages in show business, despite the fact that she never received any singing lessons. In fact, Broadway lore holds that
George Gershwin warned her never to take a singing lesson after seeing her opening reviews for
Girl Crazy.
Stephen Sondheim, who wrote the lyrics for Merman's, remembered that she could become "mechanical" after a while. "She performed the dickens out of the show when the critics were there," he said. He added, "or if she thought there was a celebrity in the audience. So we used to spread a rumor that
Frank Sinatra was out front. That whoever,
Judy Garland was out front. I'll tell you one thing [Merman] did do, she steadily upstaged everybody. Every night, she'd be about one more foot upstage, so finally they were all playing with their backs to the audience. I don't think it was conscious. Ethel wasn't big on brains. But she sure knew her way around a stage, and it was all instinctive."
Career
Merman began singing while working as a
secretary for the B-K Booster (automobile)
Vacuum Brake Company in Queens. She eventually became a full time
vaudeville performer and played the pinnacle of vaudeville, the
Palace Theatre in New York City. She had already been engaged for
Girl Crazy, a musical with songs by
George and
Ira Gershwin, which also starred a very young
Ginger Rogers (19 years old) in
1930. Although third billed, her rendition of "
I Got Rhythm" in the show was popular, and by the late
1930s, she'd become the first lady of the Broadway musical stage. Many consider her the leading Broadway musical performer of the
Twentieth Century, with her signature song being "
There's No Business Like Show Business" (from
Annie Get Your Gun).
Merman starred in five
Cole Porter musicals, among them
Anything Goes in
1934, where she introduced "
I Get a Kick Out of You", "Blow Gabriel Blow", and the title song. Her next musical with Porter was
Red, Hot and Blue, in which she co-starred with
Bob Hope and
Jimmy Durante and introduced "It's Delovely" and "
Down in the Depths (on the 90th floor)". In
1939's DuBarry Was a Lady, Porter provided Merman with a "can you top this" duet with
Bert Lahr, "
Friendship". Like "You're the Top" in
Anything Goes, this kind of duet became one of her signatures. Porter's lyrics also helped showcase her comic talents in duets in
Panama Hattie ("Let's Be Buddies", "I've Still Got My Health"), and
Something for the Boys ("By the Mississinewah", "Hey Good Lookin'").
Irving Berlin supplied Merman with equally memorable duets, including counterpoint songs "An Old-Fashioned Wedding" with
Bruce Yarnell, written for the
1966 revival of
Annie Get Your Gun, and "
You're Just in Love" with
Russell Nype in
Call Me Madam. Merman won the
1951 Tony Award for Best Actress for her performance as Sally Adams in
Call Me Madam. She reprised her role in the lively
Walter Lang film version.
Perhaps Merman's most revered performance was in as
Gypsy Rose Lee's mother Rose. Merman introduced "
Everything's Coming Up Roses" and "
Some People" and ended the show with the wrenching "
Rose's Turn". Critics and audiences saw her creation of Madame Rose as the performance of her career. She didn't get the role in the movie version, however, which went to movie actress
Rosalind Russell, and an infuriated Merman was quoted as saying: "There's a name for women like her but it's seldom used in society outside [of] a kennel." (Since this is a line from the film
The Women, in which Russell appeared, the story may be
apocryphal.) She also insulted Russell's husband, Freddie Brisson, by calling him the "Lizard of Roz".
[citationneeded] Merman decided to take
Gypsy on the road and trumped the
motion picture as a result.
Merman lost the
Tony Award to
Mary Martin, who was playing Maria in
The Sound of Music. "How can you buck a nun?" mused Merman. The competitiveness notwithstanding, Merman and Martin were friends off stage and starred in a legendary musical special on
television.
Merman retired from
Broadway in
1970, when she appeared as the last Dolly Levi in
Hello, Dolly!, a show initially written for her. No longer willing to "take the veil," as she described being in a
Broadway role, Merman preferred to act in
television specials and movies.
Though she reprised her roles in
Anything Goes and
Call Me Madam, film executives wouldn't select her for
Annie Get Your Gun or
Gypsy. Some critics state the reason for losing the roles was that her outsized stage
persona didn't fit well on the screen. Others have said that after her behavior on the set of
Twentieth-Century Fox's
There's No Business Like Show Business,
Jack Warner refused to have her in any of his motion pictures, thereby causing her to lose the role of Rose in
Gypsy, though some believe
Rosalind Russell's husband and agent,
Freddie Brisson, negotiated the rights away from Merman for his wife. Nonetheless,
Stanley Kramer decided to cast her as the battle-axe Mrs. Marcus, mother-in-law of
Milton Berle, in the madcap
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
Merman's last movie role was a self-
parody in the comedy movie
Airplane!, appearing as a
soldier, Lieutenant Hurwitz. Hurwitz is suffering from
shell shock and thinks he's Ethel Merman. Merman sings "Everything's Coming Up Roses", while the nurses drag her back to bed and give her a
sedative. In
1979, she recorded the infamous
The Ethel Merman Disco Album, with many of her signature show-stoppers set to a
disco beat.
Personal life
Merman was married and divorced four times:
- Bill Smith, theatrical agent
- Robert Levitt, a newspaper executive
- Robert Six, an airline executive (1953 – 1960)
- Ernest Borgnine, the actor, in 1964. They announced the impending nuptials at P.J. Clarke's, a legendary night spot in New York, but Merman filed for divorce after just 32 days. Johnny Carson soon quipped on his Tonight Show, "And they said it wouldn't last!"
With Levitt, Merman had two children: Ethel and Robert; they divorced in
1952. Ethel Levitt committed
suicide in
1967.
Merman co-wrote two volumes of memoirs,
Who Could Ask for Anything More in
1955 and
Merman in
1978. In a
radio interview, Merman commented on her many marriages, saying that "We all make mistakes, that's why they put rubbers on pencils, and that's what I did. I made a few loo-loos!" In the latter book, the chapter entitled "My Marriage to Ernest Borgnine" consists of one blank page.
Death
Merman was diagnosed with
glioblastoma and underwent
surgery in
April 1983 to have the malignant
tumor removed from her
brain. Less than ten months later, in
February 1984, the cancer had
metastasized and claimed her life.
Merman in popular culture
Merman had a cameo appearance in the movie
Airplane! when a combat veteran suffering from "severe shell-shock" believed he was Ethel Merman. During the course of the joke she sat up in bed and sang a few bars of "
Everything's Coming Up Roses".
The British
Psychobillyband
The Meteors recorded an instrumental called "Return Of The Ethel Merman" for their
1986 album
Sewertime Blues.
Merman is mentioned a lot in the musical series
Forbidden Broadway making fun of the wireless microphones and soft singing used in
The Phantom of the Opera (1986 musical).
In the Musical 'Taboo'
(External Link
)by
Boy George, during the song Ich Bin Kunst, he states "I dressed up in the wardrobe of my mother (Ethel Merman)'
In the 1987 film
Good Morning, Vietnam, Army radio disc jockey
Adrian Cronauer (played by
Robin Williams) alluded to Merman's distinctive, brassy style and powerful voice during one of his improvised comic news bulletins. "Ethel Merman has been used to jam Russian radar systems. 'I've got a feeling that love is here to stay!' When asked for a reply, the Russians said 'Vat de hell vas dat?'"
In the 2005 film
The Producers, the actor playing the part of
Adolf Hitler calls himself "the German Ethel Merman."
Audible samples of Ethel Merman
Courtesy of NPR
Windows Media Player Required
Ethel Merman with Jimmy Durante "You Say the Nicest Things"
Ethel Merman Sings: "The World is Your Balloon"
Ethel Merman Sings: "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend"
Theatre performances
Girl Crazy (1930)
George White's Scandals of 1931 (1931)
Take a Chance (1932)
Anything Goes (1934)
Red, Hot and Blue (1936)
Stars In Your Eyes (1939)
DuBarry Was a Lady (1939)
Panama Hattie (1940)
Something for the Boys (1943)
Sadie Thompson (1944) (left during rehearsals; replaced by June Havoc)
Annie Get Your Gun (1946)
Call Me Madam (1950)
Happy Hunting (1956)
(1959)
Annie Get Your Gun (1966) (revival)
Hello, Dolly! (1970) (replacement)
(1977)
Filmography
Follow the Leader (1930)
We're Not Dressing (1934)
Kid Millions (1934)
The Big Broadcast of 1936 (1935)
Strike Me Pink (1936)
Anything Goes (1936)
Happy Landing (1938)
Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938)
Straight, Place or Show (1938)
Stage Door Canteen (1943)
Call Me Madam (1953)
There's No Business Like Show Business (1954)
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)
The Art of Love (1965)
Journey Back to Oz (1974) (voice)
Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976)
Airplane! (1980)
Television performances
The Ford 50th Anniversary Show (1953)
Panama Hattie (1954)
Merman On Broadway (1961)
The Lucy Show, two-parter, as herself (1963)
Maggie Brown (1963) (unsold pilot)
An Evening with Ethel Merman (1965)
Annie Get Your Gun (1967)
Tarzan and the Mountains of the Moon (1967)
Batman, "The Sport of Penguins", two-parter as Lola Lasagne (1967)
That Girl, two episodes, as herself (1967-68)
'S Wonderful, 'S Marvelous, 'S Gershwin (1972)
Ed Sullivan's Broadway (1973)
The Muppet Show (1976)
Match Game PM (1976), (1978)
You're Gonna Love It Here (1977) (unsold pilot)
A Salute to American Imagination (1978)
A Special Sesame Street Christmas (1978)
Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July (1979) (voice)
The Love Boat, five episodes, (1979-1982)
Night of 100 Stars (1982)Further Information
Get more info on 'Ethel Merman'.
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